Americans Trust ‘Our’ Intelligence Agencies: Should We? – OpEd

The record is clear that ‘our’ (that is, the ruling Establishment’s) intelligence agencies, such as the CIA, have lied to the public many times, and actually lie routinely — but these lies are always revealed only decades later, by historians, when it’s decades too late, because the damage was already done, decades before. Think, for example, of just two now-famous cases, Iran 1953, and Chile 1973, in both of which instances the U.S. Government ended a democracy abroad, and established a brutal dictatorship there (the Shah in Iran, and Pinochet in Chile) — but what good can a historian do, when the Government and its ‘news’-media were persistently lying, and they had fooled the U.S. public, at the time — which is all that really counted (and ever will count)? Can a historian undo the damage that the Government and its propaganda-agencies had perpetrated, by means of their lies, and coups, and invasions? Never. But this Government, and its propaganda-agents, claim to defend democracies, not to end them. Can it actually be a democracy, if it’s doing such things, and doing it time after time?

Something’s deeply wrong here. Government by deceit, cannot be a democracy. And, yet, the public still don’t get the message, that we don’t live in a democracy, even after it has (though only by implication) been delivered to us in history-books. By then, it’s no longer in the news, and so only few people really care about it. The message of history is thus not learned. The public still accepts the ongoing lies — the new lies, in the new ‘news’, to justify the new atrocities. One reason why, is that America’s historians fail their obligations: America’s historians have an obligation to the American public to state clearly that the U.S. is now a dictatorship. This is the current reality. But the myth, that this country is a democracy, continues to be spread, even by historians, who should, by now, know better.

During the period after the Soviet Union, and its communism, and its Warsaw Pact military alliance, all ended in 1991, the historical record of the U.S. and its allies (all now after the Cold War has supposedly been over) has become even worse than it was during the Cold War, and is even more clearly evil, because the ideological excuse that had formerly existed (and which was only the excuse, in most cases, such as in the cases of Iran, and of Chile) is gone. Though the ideological excuse is gone, the bad behavior has become even worse. Today’s U.S. regime is, to be frank, bloodthirsty

Iraq in 2003 was a particularly blatant demonstration of today’s U.S.-Government’s psychopathy regarding foreign affairs. So: let’s consider this unusually clear example (hopefully, to learn a lesson from it — which still hasn’t yet been learnt):

U.S. President Donald Trump has now appointed to lead the CIA the very same woman, Gina Haspel, who had operated, under Tenet, under Bush, the CIA “black site” in Thailand, where Abu Zubaydeh was waterboarded 83 times and otherwise tortured so that he lost his left eye. The reason why he was being tortured was in order to extract from him testimony that Saddam Hussein had been involved in 9/11, but Zubaydeh didn’t even know anything about any such matter, and tried desperately to say what he thought his torturers wanted him to say, so as to stop these tortures, but he didn’t know that they were intending to torture him until he would implicate Saddam Hussein in causing the 9/11 attacks. And so the torturing just went on and on. The CIA’s Haspel finally gave up, after deciding that he’d die if they continued any further. The problem then became to hide him from the public. So, Zubaydeh subsequently has been held incommunicado at Guantanamo since 2001, so that he can’t communicate with anyone in the outside world, and thus the crimes of George Bush and his employee George Tenet and his employee Gina Haspel, can’t be prosecuted. And, now, Trump appoints her to Tenet’s old spot, as the CIA Director. So: Bush had hired her, then protected her. Obama then protected instead of prosecuted her. And, finally, Trump now promotes her, to be the CIA’s new chief. She has demonstrated herself to be a reliable liar for whomever is her boss. Trump therefore can trust her to vouch for whatever he wants her to ‘prove’, to whatever American suckers still remain, as being suckers.

When Westerners watch TV news, they hear lies. When they go to their ballot boxes, they hear false promises. When they are told that their sons and daughters are sent to fight a war in a distant country in order to protect the homeland, they are hearing fabricated stories of lies and deception.

Their politicians lie, and their media dance to the tunes of the lies of their politicians.

Who can deny any of that, without publicly becoming recognized as being a fool?

Have we had enough now, of that lying? Because, accepting just a little bit more of it, could mean the end of everything. If it’s not going to be the end of the liars, it will probably soon be the end of everything. Because this is the path that we now are on.

Even the former conservative, David Stockman, is alarmed that the U.S. regime is going insane, with its war-fever. This is not a government that represents the American public, but it does represent the people who control corporations such as Lockheed Martin. Recently, I headlined “How the Military Controls America”, and explained the root cause behind this potentially world-ending problem. Everything is unfortunately coming together in the worst possible way. It has happened before, but never during the nuclear era — this is far worse even than during the Cuban Missile Crisis, because, at that time, both superpower leaders were intelligently self-interested, and each also had authentic interest in the general welfare. That’s not true today — certainly not on the American side. But the problem isn’t only Donald Trump. Maybe he will culminate it, but he represents America’s aristocracy. That’s the source of the problem, and he is determined to be their leader. He has assembled their dream-team, which, prior to his becoming President, no one had had the nerve to place so fully in charge.

*Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010

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